Séminaire/Seminar – Ludovica Zullo – The power of flatness: an ab initio guide to tunable flat bands in 2D materials – 18/03/26

22-32-201

Ludovica Zullo,  University of Wuerzburg

Abstract

In condensed matter, flatness is anything but boring: when a band’s energy dispersion becomes nearly flat, electrons lose their kinetic identity and correlations take over, giving rise to exotic physics. In this talk, I will show how to design two-dimensional materials in which flat bands may be engineered and tuned through experimentally accessible « control knobs » including strain, dimensionality interplay, twisting, and heterostructure stacking.
I will show how to manipulate different platforms to unlock the power of flat bands physics: for example magnetic ordering in strained kagome lattices [1], emergent superconductivity in otherwise non-superconducting transition-metal dichalcogenides whitin incommensurate heterostructures [2], twist-tunable spin textures [3], and the delicate interplay between one-dimensional charge-density waves and two-dimensional interactions in rectangular lattices [4].
These examples illustrate how controlling flatness via ab initio predictions transforms materials into laboratories for emergent quantum phenomena for future devices applications.